


string lights

by flightagain



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Christmas Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-01
Updated: 2014-12-01
Packaged: 2018-02-27 17:17:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2700968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flightagain/pseuds/flightagain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're tired, and it's almost Christmas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	string lights

They’ve had a long run of hunts – a few hauntings, a rugaru, some teenagers messing around – and it’s been a while since they’ve seen the bunker. A while since they had anything close to a decent night’s sleep or a good meal. Sam’s riding shotgun and basically passed out against the door, and when Dean glances in the rear-view mirror, he can see Castiel looking out the window. Cas is illuminated by occasional passing headlights, blinking slowly, looking cold. 

There’s snow on the ground and more falling, and when Dean sees a diner, he decides to pull in. 

“We’re stopping,” Castiel says, quietly. Not like he’s objecting; just like he’s observing.

“Yeah,” Dean replies. “Food. “ The place looks warm, anyway, and it’s got these little lights all around it, hung from wall to wall. It’s only when Cas is opening his door and Dean’s giving Sam a shove awake that he realizes: Christmas lights. There’s a tiny fake tree in the window, too. He stares. “Hey,” he says. “What’s the date?”

Castiel blinks at him, then shrugs a shoulder and gets out of the car. Dean watches him put his hands deep in his jacket pockets, turning around to wait. Cas looks as tired as Dean’s feeling right now, and Dean wishes, badly, that they were back in Kansas. 

Sam’s woken up, rolling his shoulders and tilting his head, and Dean says, just to get the question answered, “Dude, what date is it?”

“Uh,” Sam says. “It was, uh… the twenty-second, a couple days ago?”

“So the twenty-fourth,” Dean says, and Sam nods.

“Yeah.” Then he laughs. “Oh. Christmas Eve.” He sounds amused. He looks out the windshield, and adds, “Okay, food, good call.”

“Yeah.” Dean nods, weary, and climbs out the car. “Hey, Cas,” he says, to Castiel with his hunched shoulders and his bruised-looking eyes, “it’s Christmas Eve.”

Cas looks at him. 

“Okay,” he says, uncertainly. 

The snow crunches beneath Dean’s boots as they head in. The place is basically deserted, and their waitress, Nadine, has this headband with antlers on it. Her earrings are lighting up, red then green, red then green. She leads them to a table and Dean slumps down next to Sam.

“We’ve got the Christmas Specials here,” Nadine tells them, handing Dean another menu, and he looks at it as she walks away.

“Christmas Specials,” he says, eyebrows raised, holding up the menu. “Any takers?”

Sam takes the menu and frowns at it, then sets it quietly back down.

“I want a burger,” Cas mutters, eyes on the table. 

The diner’s playing _All I Want For Christmas Is You._ Dean is really fucking tired.

They mostly eat in silence. Sam keeps sighing, possibly without actually meaning to, and at one point Cas almost knocks over Dean’s Coke. He blinks at it, then up at Dean; they just look at each other for a moment, then go back to their food. 

It’s Christmas tomorrow. It isn’t Cas’s first Christmas, not by a long shot, but it’s his first Christmas here. And it’s Dean’s first Christmas with Sam and Cas, with everyone alive and together, and maybe it could’ve been something else, too. His first Christmas with Charlie and Jody, Kevin and Linda, his first Christmas with the family he’s got right now. But he’s stuck out here, nowhere near the bunker; there’s no one there right now, as far as he knows. So it’ll be just another Christmas like the rest. One that snuck up on them, one that doesn’t even have the cheap and shitty presents, because what’s the point, when it’s Christmas Eve and you all know you’ve forgotten.

“Dean,” Sam says. “Want me to drive for a while?”

Dean’s about to tell him no, and then he realizes that Sam and Cas are both staring at him, and that he’s been holding the same couple of fries for a solid few minutes now.

“Uh,” he says.

“Sam’s slept,” Cas points out, sounding practical and also kind of resentful of that fact, and Dean tries not to yawn. He nods.

“Yeah,” he says. “Okay.” He rubs a hand down his face, and, thinking of stretching out in the backseat, adds, “You want shotgun?”

“No,” Cas replies. Dean feels a little dip of disappointment.

“Have shotgun, man. Your turn.”

“No,” Cas says again. “I’m fine.”

“Cas.”

“I don’t want shotgun.”

Dean stares at him. Cas has his stubborn look. Dean wonders if Cas is thinking of stretching out in the backseat too.

Well. He had his chance. It’s not Dean’s fault Cas spent it looking out the window.

Dean says, “Castiel. Take shotgun.”

Castiel says, “No.”

“Guys,” Sam says, tiredly, and they both glance at him, then look back at each other.

“I’m not riding shotgun,” Dean says, flat.

“Me neither,” Cas replies, equally flat. Sam sighs, and Dean knows that that time it was on purpose.

\--

Sam’s driving, and Dean and Cas are sitting on opposite sides in the back. Dean’s not entirely sure how it happened. He just knows that he’s tired, and that shotgun would’ve meant losing, and that he didn’t want to lose. 

He’s leant against his door, trying to stretch his legs out, but Cas is doing the same and it’s not working out for either of them. Sam keeps looking at them in the rear-view mirror, and Dean doesn’t look back, because he doesn’t need Sam’s expression right now. He doesn’t need that in his life.

“Stop _jostling_ ,” he hisses at Cas, when Cas’s foot kicks Dean’s ankle.

“Your legs are on my side,” Cas says. “Get off my side.”

“No, they’re not – they’re in the middle seat, that’s no one’s side – ”

“It’s my side of the middle.”

“It’s not your – ” Dean stops. He stares at the middle seat, dividing it in his head. “Shut up.”

Castiel narrows his eyes, then pushes himself up from where he’s leant against his side of the car. He shuffles until he’s sitting half in his seat, half in the middle seat. Dead on for his side of the divide: a total roadblock. He shuts his eyes.

“Don’t be an asshole,” Dean says, and Cas says, “Dean, I’m trying to sleep.”

Sam says, very quietly, “Oh my God.” 

They ignore him. 

Dean sits up from where he’s been resting against the car door. He looks at Cas. He looks at his own half of the middle seat.

\--

Sam’s driving, and Dean and Cas are sitting right next to each other in the back. 

Dean’s not entirely sure how it happened.

He thinks that Cas has fallen asleep, though. He thinks this partly because Cas isn’t frowning anymore. He’d been frowning for a while, after Dean moved next to him. He’d nudged Dean, elbow totally venturing to Dean’s side of the car, and Dean had said, “Cas, I’m trying to sleep.”

Cas had somehow managed to glower with his eyes closed. 

So, there’s that. That’s part of it, the lack of shut-eyed glaring. But there’s also the way that Cas isn’t an upright line of pissed off tension at Dean’s side anymore. Cas isn’t determinedly defending his half of the back. He’s actually kind of… slumped. He’s slumped a lot, in actual fact, and he’s warm and relaxed and his head is on Dean’s shoulder. 

Dean – 

Well, he doesn’t know how it happened.

Cas is definitely on Dean’s side of the middle seat. But he’s breathing evenly too, in and out, chest rising and falling, face pressed into Dean’s neck a little. Cas makes a tiny sound, his head shifting, his hair tickling, and Dean tries to breathe like a normal human being. 

He had closed his eyes when the slumping began. It had been some kind of weird defence mechanism: if I can’t see Sam, Sam can’t see me. The more logical defence would probably have been movement, or waking up Cas, or basically anything other than closing his eyes and staying still, but it’s too late now: this is what Dean’s brain has stuck him with.

He keeps his eyes shut. It’s kind of comfortable, he supposes. He tries to even out his own breathing, to at least relax a little. It’s definitely warmer, with Cas like this. It’s definitely nice.

\--

Sam’s parking the car, and Dean and Cas are cuddling in the backseat. 

Dean only even realizes it when he wakes up, blinking blearily, to the sight of a motel parking lot and Sam opening the driver door. Sam glances back, and then they’re looking at each other. It’s happening.

“I’ll get the keys,” Sam says, totally normally, and then he smiles in a normal way, a way that’s a little kind, maybe even a little sad. And then just like that, he’s gone. 

Dean swallows. He has an arm around Cas, somehow, and Cas has an arm resting on Dean’s stomach, somehow, and Cas is _still asleep_ and Dean kind of hates him for that.

But he doesn’t. 

The motel’s got one of those electronic signs outside, glowing red numbers that change to update the current temperature, then the time. It’s way too fucking cold, Dean can see, and it’s Christmas. 

Castiel makes a low humming noise against Dean’s chest.

It would be really dumb if Dean’s throat felt tight right now. That would be totally ridiculous.

It’s just that Cas is here, is the thing. That he’s been here, since he fell. And yeah, he can be difficult, he can be grumpy and sullen and argumentative over the most bizarre shit, but he’s also Dean’s best friend. Right here with Dean. Like, _right_ here, and it’s Christmas and Dean’s got no presents once again, so maybe this is going to be his present to himself: he’s not going to pretend that this isn’t nice. He’s not even going to pretend that he’s surprised it’s nice.

This, Cas asleep against him, is nice, and Dean kind of figured it would be. 

And Sam’s even seen it, the whole thing, and yet Dean somehow does not want to disappear from the planet. Maybe a little. But mostly not. And that’s probably some sort of Christmas miracle in itself.

So when Cas starts to stir, when he realizes what’s going on and all the tension comes speeding back, and he’s jerkily trying to untangle himself and muttering hurried, alarmed apologies, Dean stops him.

“Hey,” he says. “It’s cool. This is cool. If you’re good.” And Cas stares at him, shocked, and behind the shock, hopeful in a way that’s almost, almost hidden. The skin below his eyes is so dark it makes Dean sad. He touches a finger to Cas’s cheek. Cas blinks.

“Dean,” he says, and Dean smiles at him.

 _Merry Christmas_ , he doesn’t say, because he doesn’t know what it’d mean to Cas, if it’d mean anything at all. But they settle back against each other, a little tentative, but really nice, and they wait for Sam, and Dean thinks that right in this moment, this is good enough for him.


End file.
